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The thoughts and opinions expressed are those of the writer and not Gamasutra or its parent company.

I run a 2D art design & production company, and I’m responsible for the promotion of our service. That I would write some articles about video game art production regularly, out from the experiences we gather from the projects. And I’d like to post the articles on Gamasutra blog, for it is the world No.1 game industry blog, that I can gain a lot of publicity.

To let even more people see my post, I often go to some important Linked-in game industry groups, post a discussion about my new article, and give a link to direct people to Gamasutra.

Recently I found a Linked-in & Gamasutra incompatible problem.

A regular Linked-in group discussion is like this: (I pick this on linked-in by random, I don’t know this gentleman, and this is not some indirect promotion)

Normally, if you include a link in the discussion content, you will get a thumbnail of the page, with some preview of the texts from there.

Some of 2 months ago, if you include whatever link from Gamasutra blog, the thumbnail/preview of the page will not be displayed, coupled with an issue that you can’t share again this discussion to other groups. Here are some screenshots before & after things go wrong.

And recently, this problem grows to one “unable to post Gamasutra link”.

See this picture, I post about my new article, with a Gamasutra link in it. If I hit “Share”, three possible results would happen:

The discussion can be successfully published, no thumbnail/preview;

The “Share” button goes grey, and eventually the discussion won’t be published;

No feedback, the discussion disappears; And then I can find it auto published in the “Promotions” category.

Some groups are so obstinate, that I can’t post at all. Sadly, they all work perfectly well with links from other sites.

I’ve reasoned, that my posts are actually welcomed in those groups, I even know a few group managers in person. It’s not probable that they would block me. And I own a group too, I know I can’t block people in this way. So it should be a glitch.

I wrote to Linked-in support, asking them to try for themselves. They said that they have the same problem, but can’t figure out a clue. They told me they need some time to research. I’m still waiting for answers now.

And I’ve found links from some sites don’t work in Linked-in groups, also. For example: www.pixar.com

Now after a few trials, I find a cure. If you are also attempting to share some Gamasutra links in Linked-in groups, you can try it. Here are the steps:

Go to the group you want to post, and find the newest discussion posted by someone else, in which she/he includes a link, and the page thumbnail displays correctly. Copy this link, that surely it works in the group for now.

Past the link in the discussion blank, wait for a few seconds, that you can see the page thumb displays.

3.Now empty the blank, fill in your own title and discussion content, you can see here a Gamasutra link is included. Keep the page thumbnail displayed all through this step.

4. Of course the thumbnail is irrelevant to your post, now in this last step, click the little x to remove the thumbnail, then click “Share”.

Now your discussion is published, or sent to the moderation queue. The page thumbnail/preview will not be displayed correctly, but at least you’re able to post the discussion.